Attention and Consciousness Flashcards
means by which we actively process a limited amount of information from the enormous amount of information available through our senses, our stored memories, and our other cognitive processes
Attention
allows us to use our limited mental resources judiciously.
Attention
By dimming the lights on many stimuli from outside (sensations) and inside (thoughts and memories), we can highlight the stimuli that interest us. This heightened focus increases the likelihood that we can respond speedily and accurately to interesting stimuli.
Attention
the state of being aware of and able to think about one’s own existence, thoughts, and surroundings.
Consciousness
It encompasses our overall awareness and subjective experience.
Consciousness
First, it helps in monitoring our interactions with the environment
Conscious attention
it assists us in linking our past (memories) and our present (sensations) to give us a sense of continuity of experience.
Conscious attention
it helps us in controlling and planning for our future actions.
Conscious attention
We try to detect the appearance of a particular stimulus
Signal detection and vigilance
We try to find a signal amidst distracters
Search
We choose to attend to some stimuli and ignore others, as when we are involved in a conversation at a party.
Selective attention
We prudently allocate our available attentional resources to coordinate our performance of more than one task at a time, as when we are cooking and engaged in a phone conversation at the same time.
Divided attention
In short notice they need to be attentive to see emergency going on in the beach that needs immediate care, and in longer period making sure that they are attentive throughout the working day see to it nothing tragic happens
Attending to Signals over the Short and Long Terms or Attention
Finding Important Stimuli in a Crowd
Signal Detection
a framework to explain how people pick out the few important stimuli when they are embedded in a wealth of irrelevant, distracting stimuli
Signal-detection theory (SDT)
often is used to measure sensitivity to a target’s presence.
SDT
When we try to detect a target stimulus (signal), there are four possible outcomes
hits
false alarms
misses
correct rejections
paying enough attention to perceive objects that are there
attention
perceiving faint signals that may or may not be beyond your perceptual range (such as a very high-pitched tone)
perception
indicating whether you have/have not been exposed to a stimulus before
memory
refers to a person’s ability to attend to a field of stimulation over a prolonged period, during which the person seeks to detect the appearance of a particular target stimulus of interest.
Vigilance
the individual watchfully waits to detect a signal stimulus that may appear at an unknown time
being vigilant
appears to be an important brain structure in the regulation of vigilance
amygdala
Two specific activation states play a role in vigilance
bursts and the tonic state
the result of relative hyperpolarization of the resting membrane potential (i.e., polarity of the membrane increases relative to its surrounding)
burst
results from relative depolarization
tonic state
During sleep, when people are less responsive to stimuli, the neurons are hyperpolarized and in burst mode higher levels of vigilance are associated with tonic discharges.
need iremember
refers to a scan of the environment for particular features—actively looking for something when you are not sure where it will appear.
search
made more difficult by distracters, nontarget stimuli that divert our attention away from the target stimulus.
search
cause more trouble under some conditions than under others.
Distracters
Suppose we look for an item with a distinct feature like color or shape. We conduct a ___?
feature search
simply scan the environment for that feature
feature search
we look for a particular combination (conjunction joining together) of features
conjunction search
explains the relative ease of conducting feature searches and the relative difficulty of conducting conjunction searches.
Feature-Integration Theory
Feature-Integration Theory proposed by?
Anne Treisman and Garry Gelade in 1980
focuses on how we integrate various visual features to perceive and identify objects in our environment.
Feature-Integration Theory
Imagine you’re searching for a red apple in a bowl of mixed fruits.
Pre-Attentive Stage: Your visual system detects various features of all fruits—colors (red, green, yellow), shapes (round, oval), and sizes (small, large) in parallel.
Focused Attention Stage: To identify the red apple, you focus your attention on combining the color red with the shape of an apple. This integration process involves scanning and attending to different fruits to find one that matches both features.
the data are a result of the fact that as the similarity between target and distracter stimuli increases, so does the difficulty in detecting the target stimuli. Thus, targets that are highly similar to distracters are relatively hard to detect. Targets that are highly disparate from distracters are relatively easy to detect
Similarity Theory
suggests that all searches, whether feature searches or conjunction searches, involve two consecutive stages
The guided-search model
the individual simultaneously activates a mental representation of all the potential targets
parallel stage
the individual sequentially evaluates each of the activated elements, according to the degree of activation
Serial stage
Imagine you are looking for a specific type of book on a crowded bookshelf:
Feature Maps: You first detect features like color and size. Each book is processed for these individual features.
Salience Map: The visual system combines these features to create a salience map highlighting books that stand out based on the detected features.
Top-Down Guidance: If you know the book you’re looking for is a hardcover and red, this prior knowledge directs your attention toward books that are red and likely to be hardcover, making the search more efficient.
cocktail party problem, the process of tracking one conversation in the face of the distraction of other conversations.
Selective Attention